Hello all! My name is Andrew and I am a 31 year old male looking to lose 35 pounds. I've been trying for the last six months to lose weight and only lost a total of five pounds. I've tried strenuous exercise, counting calories, weight loss pills, and other tactics but can't seem to lose any weight. My first question I wanted to pose to everyone is this: why is it that sometimes when I weight myself in the morning I weight a good deal more than the day before even though I stuck to my diet? This happens to me a lot; I'll stick to 1500 calories, I'll get 8 hours of sleep, and the next morning I'll weight a good pound more than the day before where as maybe for the last few days when I stick with the same diet I'll see a consistent .2 or .4 lb weight loss. Thanks!

Welcome to the forum ^_^

Usually when I weigh more the next day I'm pretty sure it's water retention. I can fluctuate around 6 pounds day to day (see the graph in my signature line) just from the amount of salt I ate the day before, and actually, graphing my salt intake next to my weight the spikes are predictable.

But, if you try weighing yourself at night and then again in the morning, you'll likely see that your morning weight actually drops, since your body loses moisture during the night. So if you were holding onto fluid, you probably just haven't lost all of it by the next day.

You could try cutting your salt intake down a bit for a more heartening result on the scale, but in the long run I don't think it matters much. Be okay with the gains short-term, as long as you're sticking to your plan. If you see a longer-term trend upwards, that's when it's time to start making some changes.

Anyway, just my two cents. Welcome again and hope to see you around here lots!

Thanks for that input Faiora. What seems to be happening with me is that I'll lose let's say...2 pounds...I'll go from 189 to 187. This will happen over the course of maybe two weeks. The, in the span of one night, I'll gain it back and it'll consistenly stay on. I won't have a significant dietary change; I don't drink alcohola or soda, never eat three hours before bed and I stay around 1500 calories a day. It happens like clockwork though and I've been stuck at the same weight for a few months now. Any advice? Thanks!

I suggest, you quit worrying about weight loss, and embrace a life style change, and practice patience.

It's a process, a learning one! Track, learn from what you track and be patient!

It's a learning process, but, you have to be willing to learn!

Andrew, you didn't mention how tall you are but 1500 calories is usually on the low end for men. Is it possible you're actually not eating enough? So your body is holding on to what you do eat? How do you count your calories? Do you measure or weigh your food? You mentioned you exercise. Are you eating back all your calories after exercise?

To answer your question Jesslan, I'm 5' 9'. It's odd you bring that up as I notice that sometimes when I'm around 1200 calories and I workout hard (burn around 500 calories) that I can't sleep at night depsite any meds I may take. My resting caloric rate is around 1900 but I have a job where I sit on my rear all day. Think I may need to up my calories? Thanks!

My RD used to say that if you don't eat enough, your body has a hard time shutting down for the night. It explained my insomnia for years coupled with my under eating. I don't know if 1500 calories with strenuous workouts would be enough for you, but it is something to keep in mind.

I'm 5'10 and female and my Resting Metabolic Rate is about 1850, measured using a DXA scan so it should be accurate. I have a sedentary job but I commute on foot to work most days. I am losing weight eating 2100 calories per day.

So it's entirely possible you're not eating enough!

Hi Andrew - just thinking about exercise, are you perhaps turning fat into muscle? That may explain why the lbs on the scale are not going down? Have you tried taking your measurements or just doing some comparison to see if your body is leaner & tighter than before?

If your resting metabolic rate is 1900 calories, that means without doing any activity at all, just laying still, you are burning 1900 calories. That's similar to my number (1836, I just checked).

Thing is, even with a sedentary lifestyle (driving to work, sitting at a desk, etc) you're burning some calories. With a sedentary lifestyle you apply a factor of 1.2 to your BMR (Resting/"Base" Metabolic rate). For me that puts my daily caloric need at 2204 in order to maintain my current weight with a sedentary lifestyle. However, I fall into the "lightly active" category because of commuting on foot every day, so I apply a factor of 1.375 for a total of 2525 calories in order to maintain.

From there I have to decide how quickly I want to lose weight. In order to lose one pound per week, I would need to reduce my maintenance calories down by 3500 per week (500 per day), so I would eat 2025 per day in order to lose at a rate of one pound per week. To lose two pounds per week I would have to reduce to 1525.

For myself, I've decided I want to lose 3-4 pounds per month, which is less than one per week. So I have adjusted my average caloric intake to 2100 and I try to keep it right around average, eating over my calories some days and under on others.

Now, it may be tempting to say that based on those numbers I could lose 2.5 pounds or more per week by reducing my calories to, say, 1250... but there are problems with that.

First, the whole "minimum requirement is 1200 calories" thing is arbitrary and does not apply to everyone. My thought is that it applies best to women of low/average height. There are probably a few women (literally only a very small number) who could do fine on less, whether to maintain or lose weight, and I suspect people with dwarfism or some other genetic/etc differences could fall into that category as well. But for someone above average height, you should not have to eat that "minimum" to lose weight, and it's probably not healthy to do so.

Another consideration is that your body will have an easier time adjusting to changes if they happen more slowly. This means if you lose as slowly as possible, you will have an easier time getting to your goal weight (trust me, there is a HUGE difference between eating 2100 and 1600 calories in a day!) and an easier time staying there.

But you need to figure out where your body is at.

So here's my suggestion:

Up your calories to around 1800/day, for about 3 weeks. Every day, first thing in the morning after using the washroom, weigh yourself and enter the data into a spreadsheet set up just for the date and your weight.

Once three (or more) weeks have passed, move all the data to a graph and apply a trend line using an automatic function (available in excel or google drive spreadsheets). Completely ignore the actual data points and just focus on the trend line. You should be able to tell if the trend line is moving up or down, and by approximately how much. If you gain one pound in those weeks (again, looking at the trend line not the data points), that means over the course of the three+ weeks you've had 3500 calories more than you needed in order to maintain.

My guess is that at 1800 calories over that period of time (if you're logging items correctly and not accounting for exercise, although no need to exercise), you will lose at least a pound. That's based on your height of 5'9 and that you're male, although I do not know your body composition. If you have a high body fat percentage (and not much lean mass), then you will need to eat fewer calories.

Hi Faiora - I know your reply was not directed to me but I found that super helpful. I am doing a calorie controlled plan and was aiming for 1050 cals a day (36yrs / 5.4 / 162.5lbs / desk for 12hrs a day) but with exercise find I am only netting about 600cals a day. Had wondered if I was too low and I found your post interesting and informative. Thanks!

I think exercise is really hard to calculate.

Food can be tough to enter correctly but if you make a graph and trend line then it doesn't really matter whether you're entering things correctly as long as you're consistent. If I always underestimate the calories I'm eating, it doesn't matter as long as I'm losing, and as long as I keep entering my calories the same way. I mean, all the numbers are subject to error anyway.

But exercise is tougher because it's not something you necessarily do every day, and different types of exercise can burn vastly different amounts of calories in a given time.

I try to eat back my exercise calories because I don't want to lose weight too quickly and have trouble keeping it off. But with that said, I usually try to underestimate rather than overestimate my exercise. I only enter things that are significantly outside my normal range of activity (for instance, the two hour hike I went on last week, or walking around downtown all afternoon and feeling tired when I get home). I ignore general travel around the city (I walk everywhere) and my commute to work, and just chalk it up to part of my average activity level, even if it varies week-to-week.

My sister is 5'2 (so shorter than you) and loses weight averaging around 1300 calories per day, give or take 200. However, I think she's losing quite slowly, which kind of goes with the territory when you're shorter.

1050 calories sounds really low but maybe it isn't too low for you—I'm not sure. All I can say I guess, is that I hope you're making sure you get all the nutrients you need in your diet, and that you're feeling good and have energy during the day.

Thank you for responding - you raise some really good points. I am hopefully that the cals in/out I am using are quite accurate as I am using the barcode scanner on the looseit app and weighing items as well as calc'ing exercise from my fitbit but you make a really good point about the consistency. So long as I continue to use the same sources and follow the trend from there I should be able to track. I set up an excel with a corresponding graph and with my diet & exercise diaries I will be able to check for any spikes or drops.

You make a very good point about nutrients - I will get back into the habit of a daily vitamin but I appreciate that sourcing from healthy food is better. Its hard for me to say if I feel better or worse. My diet over the holidays was so bad (basically wine with lots of cheese, red meat, white bread and butter) that I felt sluggish pre-diet. Will be watching energy level's closely though as the numbers might say one thing but ultimately how one feels is the best barometer.

Andrew - sorry for derailing your post, I hope that the questions I asked and the great responses from Faiora will be of benefit to you.

This information is excellent Faiora, I actually ate about 300 more calories yesterday than I have for any day the last two weeks and actually saw a pound drop on the scale. I'm thinking that at my 1200 calories/exercise program my body may have been stubbornly holding on to my excess weight. I'm going to do as you suggested; chart everything, then report back and let you know the boards know how it's going to help make sure I'm going in the right direction. Thanks again!

Wow. That's awesome!